A wealth of environmentally enlightened ideas were offered in Bungalow 3D Wednesday afternoon, as several Skyline students presented their own ideas to make Skyline College’s campus more “green” and environment friendly in Professor Cindy Moss’ honors statistics class. CaliforniaWhile statistics may seem like an odd course for this type of project, presenters tied their pitches for a “greener” Skyline together nicely with all necessary information supporting their ideas.

Student Ashley Good, one of the day’s presenters, suggested Skyline start replacing more harmful products to the environment like plastic bottles and Styrofoam, with more affordable and eco-friendly alternatives like bioplastics and bagasses in places like the cafeteria. “This would be the first time – if Skyline were to use this product,” said Good, “the school would support this change”.

Juan Mendoza, the second presenter, recommended that Skyline start selling reusable containers in order to cut down on the 30,000 recyclable containers that are being thrown out on campus today. While only 38% of students said they would purchase such an item in a sample survey Mendoza conducted, he concluded that this alone could cut down the numbers of containers being thrown away to nearly 15,000.

One theme that was prevalent throughout both presentations was how wasteful humans can be. Mendoza used a bar graph as evidence of how in 100 years the average human has jumped from producing 124 pounds of garbage annually in 1907 to a startling 1240 pounds a year today (in 2007); while the beginning of Good’s slideshow showed the audience pictures of overcrowded landfills.

The impact of the presentations was obvious. As soon as the slideshows concluded, a member of the audience recommended they take their ideas to higher powers who could help get these ideas implemented.

“They’re doing a project that really can make a change,” said Professor Moss, “and I will be really surprised if [Skyline doesn’t] look into it and actually make these changes, because it will be cheaper for the school to use these products and much better for the environment”.